Talk about a back-seat driver! Ford Motor Co. has created a device which allows parents to control how fast their teenagers drive, limits the volume on the car radio and makes sure their seat belts are fastened.

It's called "MyKey," and Ford announced this week that it will be a standard feature starting next year on the 2010 Ford Focus and other Ford, Lincoln and Mercury models.

The key can be programmed to limit the car's top speed, sounding chimes at 45 miles per hour, 55 mph and 65 mph.

The car's top speed can be restricted to 80 mph

Another feature disables the car's audio system until seat belts are fastened or limits audio volume to 44 percent of total volume.

The conservative Judicial Confirmation Network is running a TV ad tying Obama to not just Rezko, but William Ayers (now using cartoons to spread his ideas) and the bombastic Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

You should expect to hear much more about these Obama associates -- some questions fair, others not; many associates legitimately slimy, others mere road kill on this political Autobahn -- in this last full month of the campaign.

Will the main stream media report these stories? If so, will it be the usual, “…let’s move along folks … nothing to see here…” that usually accompanies negative reports about the Obama campaign?

Mark Twain once said, “if you don’t read newspapers you are uninformed - if you do read newspapers you are misinformed.”

There are many forms of “push polling.” The most common is to include more of one major political party than the other in the sampling base. Also, questions to respondents can be worded so that the desired result is obtained.

This year “push polling” is even easier by simply including a larger percent of blacks in the sample to show an Obama lead.

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A discussion about polling should also include the exit polling on election day in 2004.

The early exit polls from precincts in Virginia showed an overwhelming lead for John Kerry, which had the Kerry Edwards campaign singing and dancing until the real vote counts came in.

It was an obvious ploy to try to influence voters in western states by showing a Kerry win in the making.

Oct 9, 2008

In Nevada, state officials say the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, including quarterback Tony Romo.

“Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada,” Secretary of State Ross Miller said, "and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4."

While those names will be flagged on Election Day, felonious voters may have better luck using other cutouts. Nevada, along with several other key battleground states, requires no ID to vote.

The FBI just raided ACORN headquarters in Nevada as a result of an investigation that revealed thousands of bogus registrations.

In North Carolina, where Obama has been running nonstop ads, ACORN has registered a record number of new voters, many of them suspicious. Statewide, Democrats are doing better than the GOP in new converts - even in traditionally Republican counties.

There have been 218,749 newly registered Democrats in North Carolina since January - more than five times the 38,337 new Republicans, state records show.

The numbers show a startlingly close political battle even in Republican-dominated Union County, with 4,233 new voters registering as Democrats and 4,362 as Republicans. In previous election years, new Republicans have outnumbered Democrats 2-to-1 in the fast-growing Charlotte-area county.

In Missouri, one ACORN registrant named Monica Rays showed up on no less than eight forms, all bearing the same signature.

Before it was over hundreds of people around the world were killed -- including about 350 in China -- bringing Asian tourism and air industries almost to a halt.

An initial cover-up of the epidemic led to the sacking of Beijing's mayor and the health minister and led to scores of conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus.

Taiwan is now suggesting SARS was intentionally started by China.

Taiwan legislators wearing surgical masks and displaying banners with skull and crossbones took over parliament's floor on Tuesday after the country's security chief accused China of starting the global SARS epidemic six years ago as part of a biological warfare campaign.

Conspiracy theories about SARS have appeared before after two Russian scientists said that SARS could have been manufactured in labs.

There is an ABC News blog entry at the link below objecting to the use of Barack’s middle name, “Hussein.”

At a pre-rally speech in Bethlehem, PA today, Lehigh County GOP Chairman Bill Platt referred to the Democratic presidential candidate twice by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama.

Critics charge that such references wrongly imply that Obama is Muslim.

Who are the critics? Are they sure Barack is not really a Muslim? After all, he once referred to “my Muslim faith.” No one else said it -- just Obama. Later, it was passed off as a slip of the tongue.

Really, if you were a Christian, how could you mistakenly say “my Muslim faith?” Well, maybe. Give him the benefit of the doubt.

(click on picture to enlarge)

From a Lucianne comment:

When Bush 41 was running, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) called him George Herbert Walker Bush 50 times in one speech. His point was to make Bush seem elitist and rich because he had two middle names. I still remember the disgust in his voice as he said “Herbert Walker” over and over again.

Obama supporters are publicizing his middle name “Hussein” all the more every time they object to its use.

Christine Downs of Dover New Hampshire was determined to fight her speeding ticket.

The 24-year-old woman interrogated police and filed motions as she represented herself at trial last year to contest the $100 ticket. She even prepared a list of 96 questions.

She lost, but decided to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

She argued that police failed to respond to her request for engineering studies used to calculate the speed limit on the road where she was ticketed in May 2007 for driving 44 in a 25-mph zone.

On Wednesday, she lost again. The high court concluded that Downs “did not overcome the presumption that the posted speed limit was valid” and that the district court did not err in its finding of her guilt.

Emergency officials had to knock down Jose Luis Garza's bedroom wall and put him in the back of a friend's pickup truck to take him to a hospital as he fought for his life. He was pronounced dead on arrival.

Garza followed in the footsteps of the world's fattest man, fellow Mexican Manuel Uribe of Monterrey, by taking his weight problem public. Garza lived about an hour away from Uribe in the northern town of Juarez.

Farza’s friend Manuel Uribe, whose record weight of 1,230 pounds earned him a place in the 2008 Guinness Book of Records, had tried to help Garza by sending him kiwis, grapefruit, pears and a protein supplement.

Oct 8, 2008

The actual facts of why the US—and now the world—economy are in severe jeopardy have little to nothing to do with the current US administration or Republicans.

However, with the Democrats’ and their media continuing to call and report the Republicans responsible, the public might never know the difference.

Despite all proof to the contrary, the media … refuse to report on the actual programs that led to the current debacle. This is called “faked and manufactured news.”

Beginning with the Democrats and President Clinton’s push to force banks and mortgage companies to lend to low-income home buyers—coupled with the Democrats running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the process that has placed us in the position of heading toward the current financial debacle was put into place. Then, with Clinton’s signing of the American Home Ownership and Economic Opportunity Act of 2000, the dye was cast.

Lenders not wanting to those who could not afford to buy homes were threatened by government investigation.

That’s when the ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) came into being in full force.

Huge balloon payments were the norm for the ARM and when they came due and equally huge foreclosure numbers for those who couldn’t pay them were the result.

As foreclosures increased, a domino effect began that took down mortgage companies and publicly exposed the corruptions inherent within the Democrats’ personal slush funds -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Republicans in Washington, including Sen. John McCain, have tried for years to pass legislation that would provide oversight on both Fannie and Freddie.

This is not good news for Barack Obama. After continual favorable press by the nations major newspapers and constant adulation by the alpha networks ABC, NBC and CBS as well as CNN and MSNBC, Barack Obama should be ahead of John McCain by a comfortable margin.

Obama is ahead by only 2 points making the race a virtual tie because the slender lead is within the margin of error.

A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll, was conducted before Tuesday's Obama-McCain debate. It was performed by live telephone operators in Zogby's in-house call center in Upstate New York, included a total of 1,220 likely voters nationwide, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points.

Oct 7, 2008

Auction giant eBay has purchased Bill Me Later, an online purchasing system smaller but similar to PayPal which is already owned by eBay.

The Timonium (Baltimore) based Bill Me Later allows customers to pay later for items purchased at more than 1,000 online retailers, including Amazon.com and Walmart.com, without entering credit card information. Instead, the customer fills in his or her birth date and the last four digits of the Social Security number.

The company uses its proprietary underwriting system to approve each transaction, which takes about three seconds. It picks up the tab and is repaid by the shopper. If customers carry a balance at Bill Me Later, they incur interest charges.

Bill Me Later has attracted large retailers, including 75 of the top 200 brand names, and nearly 4 million consumers.

The big question is - will Amazon.com, one of Bill Me Later’s biggest customers, abandon the relationship now that eBay owns Bill Me Later.

It is no secret that Amazon.com is not a friend of eBay but so far has been non-committal about its plans to continue using Bill Me Later.

Amazon.com issued this statement: “Currently, Bill Me Later is still available as a payment option on our site, but I can’t speculate as to whether we’ll continue to offer them going forward.”

Volunteers supporting Barack Obama picked up hundreds of people at homeless shelters, soup kitchens and drug-rehab centers and drove them to a polling place yesterday on the last day that Ohioans could register and vote on the same day, almost no questions asked.

This was done by a pro-Obama group that takes advantage of a quirk in the state's elections laws that allows people to register and cast ballots at the same time without having to prove residency.

Republicans have argued that the window could lead to widespread voter fraud because officials wouldn't have an opportunity to verify registration information before ballots were cast.

This happened to a lesser degree in Ohio four years ago. This year Ohio Democrats seem determined to outdo the infamous Cook County Illinois “dead people vote.”

Oct 6, 2008

Ammon Shea, 37, who has been dissecting dictionaries since the age of 10, spent a year absorbing 59 million words, from A to Zyxt - the equivalent of reading a John Grisham novel every day.

Cooped up in the basement of his local library, the removal man from New York would devote up to 10 hours a day painstakingly making his way through all 20 volumes of the OED - helped by cup after cup of very strong coffee.

Among his favorite discoveries were obmutescence (willfully quiet), hypergelast (a person who won't stop laughing), natiform (shaped like buttocks) and deipnosophist (a person who is learned in the art of dining.)

Maybe he was obsessed by very, very short stories ... he really needs to get out more.

The nation's leading pediatricians' group, the American Academy of Pediatrics, has issued a new report about dangers from exotic animals as pets for small children.

About ten years ago the hedgehog (pictured) became a popular pet for children.

Warning: young children should not keep hedgehogs as pets—or hamsters, baby chicks, lizards and turtles, for that matter—because of risks for disease.

Besides evidence that they can carry dangerous and sometimes potentially deadly germs, exotic pets may be more prone than cats and dogs to bite, scratch or claw—putting children younger than 5 particularly at risk, the report says.

"Many parents clearly don't understand the risks from various infections" these animals often carry, said Dr. Larry Pickering, the report's lead author and an infectious disease specialist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For example, about 11 percent of salmonella illnesses in children are thought to stem from contact with lizards, turtles and other reptiles, Pickering said. Hamsters also can carry this germ, which can cause severe diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps.